governing specification · PRD v0.3 · supersedes v0.2

Common Information System
Product Requirements

The canonical specification for the system that holds the authoritative state of RegenHub, LCA and makes that state legible to members, directors, officers, auditors, and the agents that build and operate it. Version 0.3 carries the ten principles unchanged, retires an external design gate whose funder context has ended, and defines four launch slices in place of a phased calendar.

status · Drafted cites · SER v0.1 · bylaws v2 (Drafted) · membership agreement v2 (Drafted) series · The Common Record · PRD RegenHub, LCA · Boulder · July 2026
§1

Preamble

This document specifies the Common Information System for RegenHub, LCA, a Colorado public benefit limited cooperative association operating publicly as Techne. The system's purpose is unchanged from the first version: to hold the cooperative's authoritative state and to make that state legible. It is the book of record and the interface through which the cooperative operates itself. It is written for organizers, for members, for counsel, and for the build and runtime agents whose working context is assembled from this series.

Version 0.3 differs from version 0.2 by two removals and one addition. Removed: the sections that established an external design discipline as a gate on delivery, and the rule that a phase shipping below its target had shipped a regression. Added: four launch slices as the unit of scope, replacing the phased calendar. Everything else carries, and where a v0.2 structure is inherited this document says so, because a refactor that hides its lineage is not legible. The removal is recorded formally below, at a citable address, so that the change is a fact in the record rather than an absence.

Deprecation recordPRD v0.3 §1a

The four properties of the Ethereum Foundation Mandate (Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, Security, collectively CROPS) served in v0.2 as the design discipline against which architectural decisions were gated, with an evolutionary pathway and per-phase stage targets. The Ethereum Foundation's community hub program has ended, and the cooperative's eligibility for that funding ended with it. Filed · as reported

Effective this version, CROPS is retired as a requirement and as a delivery gate. It is retained in the record as a design note and as history. The ten principles of §2, which predate the mapping and were always the cooperative's own, carry forward unchanged and are the sole design authority of this specification. Properties formerly credited to the mapping survive only where a principle holds them on the cooperative's own reasoning: openness under principles 02, 04, 07, and 10; security as conservation, traceability, and audit under principles 04, 05, and 09; privacy under principle 06; and portability under principle 08. Censorship resistance is not carried as a requirement. On-chain attestation of the event log moves from commitment to optional layer, adoptable later only with its own stated justification.

The sibling document Hub Operations PRD v0.1, which specified the grant-reporting surface, is retired as a governing specification. Its application, event registration, and attendance modules are salvaged into the Belong and Gather slices of §4. Its KPI and compliance machinery is retired with the grant. Nothing is deleted; the superseded documents remain in the record as history. Drafted · this record

Document conventions follow the series overview (SER v0.1 §2): every claim wears a status mark; citations use code, version, and section; supersession is explicit; only humans record decisions; the Subchapter K vocabulary quarantine holds throughout.

§2

Principles

Ten principles, carried from v0.2 with their numbering intact so existing citations continue to resolve. What is removed is only the mapping layer that annotated them against an external mandate. They now stand, as they always could have, on the cooperative's own authority.

01Augmentation, not automationThe system exists to improve human coordination, not to replace human judgment. Agents draft, surface, and guide. Humans decide, sign, and govern.
02Legibility is the productA governance system that confuses its members works against the thesis that justifies its existence. Every interface must pass the test of a curious new member, not a co-op MBA.
03Bylaws are the specificationThe legal documents define the entities, events, thresholds, and rights the system must faithfully represent. Where bylaws are silent, board policy fills the space. Where both are silent, a deliberate product decision is required and recorded.
04Traceability over opacityEvery record links to the authority that governs it. Every derived value links to its inputs. A member following a question back to its source never hits an unexplained boundary.
05Conservation at the ledgerVotes, stock, and capital accounts are conserved quantities. What enters a balance must leave another. The schema enforces this before any interface renders it.
06Confidentiality at the data layerPrivacy is a property of the record, not the screen. Interfaces inherit access constraints from the underlying data, so no view can accidentally expose what the record itself protects.
07Democratic by defaultAny member can see what governs them. Aggregate figures, meeting minutes, board policies, and the benefit report are accessible without friction. Exceptions require a reason rooted in the bylaws.
08Portable by constructionData belongs to the cooperative, not the vendor. Every table has an export path; every record resolves to an open format. Vendor lock-in at the data layer is a governance failure, regardless of tool choice.
09Audit by designEvery change to state is an event row with actor, timestamp, and prior value. The system answers what happened, when, and why the same way it answers what is true now.
10Composability with other cooperativesThe schema and interfaces are designed so the model generalizes. What works for RegenHub should work for the next LCA, the next credit union, the next housing cooperative, with minimal adaptation.
carried from CIS PRD v0.2 §02 · numbering stable for citation · mapping annotations removed per §1a
§3

System definition

One authoritative state with three doors. The doors differ; the room does not. Browse is the graphical surface, Ask is the natural-language surface, Verify is the ledger and its audit views. All three read the same underlying record; none holds private state of its own.

The system remains defined as much by what it is not. It is not a marketing site: the public door (LP) introduces the system but is not the system. It is not a CRM: people appear in the record as agents with memberships and agreements, not as leads. And it is not a social platform: the Find one another slice of §4 adds a bulletin surface where members post offers and invitations to play, practice, and work, but entries there are governed records with authors and lifecycles, not a feed ranked for engagement. This is a clarification of the v0.2 boundary rather than a breach of it, and it is named here so the departure is chosen, not slipped.

The ratification vote of August 14, 2026 is recorded in the system as a governed event with signatures, but the full governance module (motions, ballots, threshold machinery) is post-launch scope, sequenced in the roadmap (RDM) after the four launch slices. Anticipated

§4

Scope · the four launch slices

The unit of scope is the slice: a coherent capability a member can use the day it lands, named identically on the public page and in the work plan. Slices replace phases. There are no dates below except the single gate the cooperative already holds; readiness conditions do the sequencing, and a blocked slice wears the mark of what blocks it, by name.

SLICE 01BelongAnticipated · August 14, 2026

Identity, membership, and agreement. The slice through which a person becomes, and remains, legible to the cooperative: one agent record that persists as their relationship changes, from visitor to member, whatever their class.

a member canRead every agreement that binds them, with version and standing marked. Sign the membership agreement and see the signature recorded. Appear in the member directory with a profile they control. Complete onboarding without a meeting.
holds agents · memberships · agreements · signatures · directory · onboarding salvage v0.2 Phase 01 (Agent & Agreement) · Hub Ops application form ready now buildable; agreements bind at ratification (R1, R2 open)
SLICE 02GatherAnticipated · August 14, 2026

Events and presence. The slice that makes the studio's calendar part of the record: what is happening, who is hosting, who came, and what came of it.

a member canSee upcoming events and sessions. Register, and cancel, without asking anyone. Have attendance counted where the record counts it. Host an event under a named agreement or policy.
holds events · sessions · registrations · attendance salvage Hub Ops event registration and attendance capture, stripped of KPI machinery ready when IM settles the event entities; targeted to the same gate
SLICE 03Find one anotherAnticipated · following slice

The opportunity surface. The genuinely new slice of this version, with no v0.2 predecessor: a bulletin of offers and invitations to play, practice, and work, where relationships and livelihoods begin. Entries are governed records with an author, a lifecycle, and an outcome, not posts in a feed.

a member canBrowse open invitations by kind: play, practice, work. Post an offer or a need, and close it when it resolves. See what an invitation led to, when the parties choose to record it.
holds opportunities · responses · resolutions salvage none; new surface, flagged as such ready when Belong lands, since every entry hangs off an agent record
SLICE 04See your shareAnticipated · after counting rules adopt

Contribution and account, read-only at first. The slice through which each member sees what they have put in, whether work, patronage, or capital, and the share of results that follows, alongside the written rules that computed it. Balances are computed from the event log, never stored as editable numbers.

a member canSee their contribution history, itemized. See their capital account as a fold over that history. Follow any figure to the events and the policy that produced it.
holds valued events · capital accounts (computed) · allocation views salvage v0.2 capital and patronage model; the eleven laws already drafted blocked by Open · adoption of the patronage counting rules and Schedule A rates (§11)

Beyond the launch slices, two capability areas remain in system scope but out of launch scope: the governance module (motions, ballots, notice machinery) and treasury execution (distributions, multi-signature authorization). Treasury's packets sequenced 2026-07-22 as the T train, specified by the Treasury module PRD at /commons/treasury/, and the deployed map settled its public name as Treasury; the governance module remains without a slice name, a module PRD, or packets, and is the one scoped capability with no trajectory yet in the roadmap. Open · governance naming and splice amended 2026-07-27 · X-13

§5

Information model, at the level of meaning

Everything in the system resolves to one of four primitives: Agents, who participate; Resources, which flow; Events, which happen; and Agreements, which bind. Agreements are first-class records, not metadata, and every relationship between records is itself an event. The vocabulary is closed: a new kind of thing is admitted only by expressing it through these four. This is what lets a contribution, a vote, a payment, and a membership be reasoned about in one grammar, and it derives from the REA accounting ontology (McCarthy, 1982) as extended in v0.2.

All authoritative state is a deterministic fold over one ordered, append-only log of events. Balances are computed, never stored. Nothing in the past is edited; a correction is a new compensating event, so the history of a fact travels with the fact. The conserved quantities named by principle 05 are enforced at the data layer: one voting share per voting member, vote tallies equal to the sum of cast votes, each capital account equal to the fold of that member's capital events, and the patron-majority economic floor the Colorado act requires. An operation that would break one of these is refused before it is written, not flagged after. Drafted · eleven laws

Every surfaced claim carries the three-axis status contract, generalized from the instrument work into the system-wide vocabulary: provenance (real or illustrative, authored), settlement (settled, anticipated, or open, authored), and temporal state (elapsed or ahead, derived from the clock and never authored). The three axes are independent and are not collapsed into a single status field.

The canonical schema belongs to the Information Model artifact (IM), whose seed is the eleven invariant laws already drafted in The System Before Its Name together with the C6 schema reference card. The nineteen cooperative core tables carry; the twelve Hub extension tables reduce to what Gather actually needs, with the final count settled in IM, not here. Anticipated · IM v0.1

§6

Authority, at the level of meaning

What an agent may see is a pure function of their role, the record's class, and the governing section of the bylaws. It is defined by the governing documents, not granted or revoked by an administrator for convenience. The default is disclosure to members; the exceptions are structural rather than toggled: tax identifiers, personal contact details, and sensitive deliberations.

Cite-as-you-enforce is the discipline that ties the books to the law, and it is concrete. Under the drafted bylaws, the memberships records cite §1.1 to 1.4; capital accounts cite §5.1; votes cite §1.6 and §1.14; meeting attendance cites §2.7; notices cite §2.4 and Article X; confidentiality obligations run end to end under Article 18. These anchors are real today and provisional today, because the bylaws they cite are themselves Drafted; every policy that cites them hardens at ratification and is re-verified then. Drafted · hardens at R1

Member classes are defined by the bylaws, including the patron-majority requirement that patron members receive the majority of economic benefit at the cooperative level. The full class structure, including the patron and investor classes and the question of whether co-working members are partners for tax purposes with capital accounts, remains before the board and counsel. This document does not resolve it; it requires only that the system represent whatever the bylaws settle, faithfully, per principle 03. Open · §11

No agent, human or machine, may invent a permission. The Authority Map (AM v0.1) is the citable catalog of roles and row-level policies, each with its bylaw anchor; the runtime instrument operates under scoped impersonation so that an answer never draws on more than the asking member could see themselves.

§7

The three doors

door oneBrowse The graphical surface, in two grammars per the interface artifact (UI): a document grammar for written and governing content, a reading column of 760 to 920 pixels; and an instrument grammar for operational surfaces, widescreen and no-scroll. Both modes, both grammars, must pass the curious-new-member test of principle 02.
door twoAsk The natural-language surface, operated by Nou under its charter (NC). Three constraints carry from the estate's gateway harness: scoped impersonation, read-before-write, and the citation requirement, so every answer names where it read. Nou drafts and retrieves; it does not decide, sign, or record. A draft is not a record until a person makes it one. Principle 01 governs this door entirely.
door threeVerify The ledger and its audit views: the event browser, the derivation trail behind any figure, and the export path behind any table. This door exists so that trust in the other two is optional. Principles 04, 08, and 09 govern it.
§8

Stack and substrate

The substrate carries from the estate and is named honestly as a constraint: static pages served from the repository, with Supabase as the data layer. There is no application server the cooperative runs, which is why enforcement lives in the database. Row-level security, append-only event tables, and declared constraints are not implementation details here; they are where the principles become load-bearing.

SupabasePostgres as the single authoritative store: row-level security per the Authority Map, append-only event sourcing per §5, timestamped migrations per the build conventions.
Repository & CIGitHub as the home of the series, the packet ledger, and the validators that enforce dependency order and gate consistency on every change. Pages serves the documents and instruments.
Claude APIThe runtime of the Ask door, operating as Nou under charter constraints. Build agents operate against the Build Protocol (BP), a separate contract.
Make.comOrchestration where a workflow needs a scheduler or a bridge between services. Every automation remains legible and auditable as a sequence of named steps.
MercuryBanking adjacency. Treasury records in the system reference bank facts; the system is the record of the money, not the money.
BaseOn-chain attestation of the event log, formerly a staged commitment, now an optional layer per §1a. It returns only with a stated justification and a decision record.

New dependencies require a decision record under the Build Protocol. The substrate's limits are accepted deliberately: what cannot be done well on static pages plus a governed database is deferred, not improvised.

§9

Non-functional requirements

Stated on the cooperative's own authority, each anchored to the principles it serves. These are the floor below which no slice ships.

principles 02 · 08 · 10PublicationThe repository is public, the governing documents are served openly, and every record resolves to an open format. Another cooperative can read everything needed to start its own.
principles 04 · 05 · 09Security floorConservation laws enforced in the database, not the interface. The audit log structural from day one. Backup and restore tested, not merely present. Key and secret custody named in the runbook. The estate's security-floor gate carries unchanged into the Verification Spec.
principle 06Privacy as minimizationThe record keeps the minimum about each person and says plainly what it keeps. Confidentiality is a property of the record, inherited by every surface, with the bylaws' obligations running end to end.
principle 02AccessibilityBoth color modes with device default, visible keyboard focus, reduced motion respected, and prose a curious new member can follow. Nothing essential lives only behind a hover.
principle 09OperabilityThe runbook exists before operations do. Migrations are timestamped and ordered; environments are named; a failed restore is a launch blocker, not a footnote.
principles 08 · 10PortabilityEvery table has an export path, and the walkaway test of §10 is an executable check, not a slogan.
§10

Success criteria

The acceptance criteria for each slice are the plain-language capability blocks in §4: each sentence beginning a member can is a test, verified per the Verification Spec. Above the slices sit six system-level criteria, each of which can be checked rather than asserted.

The curious new memberA new member finds what governs them, what they have contributed, and what is happening next without asking anyone. Principles 02 and 07, tested with real newcomers, not personas.
No unexplained boundaryFollowing any enforcement or any figure to its source ends at a citation and recoverable inputs, never at a wall. Principle 04.
Replay holdsA deterministic replay of the event log reproduces every published balance and tally exactly. Principle 05 and the fold law of §5.
The walkaway testThe published schema, bylaw mappings, formulas, and agent code are usable by another cooperative without renegotiation. Principles 08 and 10, executable in the Verification Spec.
Restore provenA full restore from backup has actually been performed before members depend on the system. A tested restore is the difference between a record and a hope.
No plan dressed as a factEvery surfaced claim wears its status mark, and nothing displays Ratified before the members have voted. The system's honesty about itself is a launch criterion, not a virtue.

The single gate the cooperative holds: Belong and Gather usable by members at the ratification gathering of August 14, 2026. Anticipated

§11

Open questions

Each question names its owner and what it blocks. None blocks the start of the build; each becomes blocking exactly where its scope becomes material, and a blocked packet wears the mark of the question that blocks it.

Q1 · The working name The Common Record is proposed as the public name, with Common Information System retained as the formal name. Adoption is a naming decision, not a design one. owner Todd  ·  blocks LP v0.2 masthead only
Q2 · Ratification The bylaws and membership agreement remain Drafted until the members vote. Every citation in §6 hardens then and is re-verified. owner the members, August 14, 2026  ·  blocks marks flipping to Ratified; agreements binding
Q3 · Counting rules The patronage counting rules and Schedule A rates must be adopted as prospective board policy before member accounts can be computed and shown. owner the board, with tax counsel  ·  blocks the See your share slice
Q4 · Class structure The patron and investor class design, including whether co-working members are partners for tax purposes with capital accounts, remains before the board and counsel. owner board and counsel  ·  blocks AM hardening; See your share semantics
Q5 · Licensing the system outward The tiers under which the system is offered to other cooperatives remain a board item. Composability under principle 10 proceeds regardless; the offering does not. owner the board (D-03)  ·  blocks the outward offering only
Q6 · Post-launch slice names Governance and treasury execution need slice names of the same plainness as the launch four before their packets are authored. Half resolved, 2026-07-27: treasury settled as Treasury by the ledger splice and the deployed map; governance still needs its name, its module PRD, and its packets. owner Todd  ·  blocks RDM structure for the governance module only
Q7 · One door or two Whether a single landing page serves both the cooperative's public address and the repository's front door, or two registers of the same page serve each. owner Todd  ·  blocks LP v0.2
Q8 · Attestation's return On-chain attestation of the event log is optional per §1a and returns only with a stated justification and a decision record. owner the board  ·  blocks nothing
Q9 · Adjacent watch item The two-instrument media currency design and the related barter-exchange reporting question sit with counsel. If adopted, they introduce new resource types into IM; they are not a launch dependency. owner counsel, then board  ·  blocks future IM resource types only
the working agreement of this document

The specification is the part of the system that can be read before it can be run. If a build agent and a curious member read this document and come away disagreeing about what the system is, the document has failed principle 02, and the fix begins here, not in the code.